SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Tuesday 10 March 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
Site updated on 9 March 2026
Sponsor of the day: Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books
Adams, Glenda
(1939-2007) Australian author in USA and elsewhere from 1964 to 1990, whose first novel, Games of the Strong (1982), is a Near Future Dystopia whose female narrator and thematic concerns (the internalization of the colonial mentality; Imperialism in general; Feminism) associate her with authors like Doris Lessing and some of ...
Oni
Videogame (2001). Bungie Studios. Platforms: Mac, PS2, Win. / Oni is a third person fighting game (see Videogames) with the narrative structure and world design of a linearly plotted First Person Shooter. This unique combination of forms works well in principle, but the game's urban environments, based on real-world architecture, seem overly repetitive and are arguably poorly ...
Kimmel, Daniel M
(1955- ) US journalist, film critic and author, active as a columnist for The Boston Herald (1996-1998) and elsewhere 1984-current, most of his nonfiction being concerned with Cinema and the Media Landscape in general. Of his several volumes of nonfiction, Jar Jar Binks Must Die ... and Other Observations About Science Fiction Movies (coll 2011) is of considerable interest for its ...
Sherrell, Carl
(1929-1990) US commercial artist and, later, author whose novels are essentially fantasies, with the exception of the unremarkable The Space Prodigal (1981), a Space Opera with a haunted, roaming anti-hero (see Heroes). His fantasies are the Raum sequence – Raum (1977) and Skraelings (1987), Raum being a similar anti-hero – plus Arcane (1978) and ...
Agriculture
It is not a subject that naturally lends itself to dramatic storytelling, but agriculture is nonetheless the activity that has long been the primary source of food for humans, and it will likely remain essential, in one form or another, in the future. Thus, some sf writers who look beyond heroic adventures to more broadly consider the future fate of humanity have addressed this mundane but vital profession. Sf stories about agriculture can be roughly categorized as follows: depictions of ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...